Boba delights across cultures
Bright yellow and blue 50 Lan boba shop in Taipei (Photo: Claire Wu, The Puma Prensa)
By Claire Wu, staff writer
Walking through the narrow streets of Taipei with my family over spring break, I stopped to relax in a small park with the locals chatting around us. Suddenly, I spotted a bubble tea store named 50 Lan on the street corner. Bright yellow and blue, the store was more of an upscale stall, with no tables and only a window at which you ordered and could see an employee making your boba tea. Ordering a Small Bubble Milk Tea, my server prepared my beverage in less than five minutes. And without further ado, I was handed my first boba milk tea from Taiwan—the birthplace of boba.
In boba milk teas, the chewy texture and just-right sweetness of the mouthwatering tapioca pearls combine with a milk tea that could satisfy tea-lovers with its herby flavor, all while balancing its sweetness with milk's creamy taste, causing even people who don't care for milk to be tempted to take a sip.
At 50 Lan, customers could order milk tea, oolong tea, black tea, or green tea, with boba. The tea store even offered a black tea with ice cream, a tea latte, and more, on top of the bubble teas. When you ordered, there were options of having more boba in your drink, lots of ice, different percentages of sugar, and different temperatures for your beverage, such as hot, cold, and room temperature, as is popular in California. But unlike in the States, the options for the pearl sizes were "Big Bubble," larger boba pearls, or "Small Bubble," chewy, bead-sized pearls of a red-orange color.
My boba drink contained the smaller pearls, and was served with a normal fast food straw, instead of the larger straws specifically designed for drinking bubble teas that you find in California. Although I ordered a medium-sized drink, the cup size ended up being about the same as a small cup's in California. My server made my beverage from powder right before my eyes, and mixed it with an automatic shaker. After the mixture was poured into a cup, the top was sealed, and the drink served. The flavor of the small boba was exactly like the taste of the larger, more iconic tapioca pearls, and the cool milk tea of my drink tasted delicious with the perfectly chewy spheres!
Although boba is becoming more and more popular in the U.S. after Taiwanese immigrants introduced bubble tea to the nation in the 1990s, our beloved boba tea originated in Taiwan in the 1980s. During my week in the country, all of the boba places that I saw were situated at the corners of streets or tucked into shopping centers. Despite being small shops, large images of boba drinks advertising for the stores quickly drew me over as I smiled at the idea of a refreshing tea. Only a couple young and efficient employees handled each store, yet the drinks that they produced were very tasty. Even the member of my family who didn't think boba was good admitted that his cup of Taiwanese boba tea was "all right."
On the subway, many young women carried a boba drink with a specially-designed cup carrier similar to the cup sleeves that Americans see from Starbucks. Evidently, beverages containing boba have taken off as a grab-and-go for students and young people across eastern Asia since its invention. The locals all know that tourists need to get a taste of Taiwan's bubble milk tea before their stay ends. My aunt in Taiwan, for instance, believes that one of the must-do's for people visiting the country is drinking boba milk tea.
Because of boba's popularity right in its homeland, it's no wonder that the zeal for the flavorful beverage has been picked up, all the way across the globe in the U.S., by high schoolers and people in California today.
Right here in Santa Rosa on Fourth Street, Sunny's Boba & More serves my favorite traditional black-tea-based boba milk tea in our area, in addition to other cold smoothies and milk teas containing popping boba and jelly. You can also get good bubble teas in Santa Rosa at other places, such as Thai milk tea with boba at T4 and Poke on Mendocino Ave. There you can also eat appetizers as you sip from your drink.
With many bubble tea chains ready to serve, Californians may soon come to think of boba tea as a staple that they look forward to as much as the people of Taiwan.